Ornithologists have known for a long time that males of monogamous bird species sometimes copulate with females from other pairs, but it is only in the last few years that researchers have shown that these extra-pair copulations can result in offspring and increase male reproductive success. Males time their extra-pair copulations to coincide with the period when females are fertilizable, and t...

Sperm from Drosophila simulans that carry a sex-ratio distorter is preferentially lost from females' sperm-storage organs. This suggests that sperm dumping is a major factor affecting sperm competition in this species, and may have evolved in response to sex-ratio distorters.

The CADE ATP System Competition (CASC) is an annual evaluation of fully automatic, first order Automated Theorem Proving systems – the world championship for such systems. CASC-J2 was the ninth competition in the CASC series. Twenty-six ATP systems and system variants competed in the various competition and demonstration divisions. An outline of the competition design, and a commentated summary...

The study of animal cognition has provided valuable data throughout the years, yet its reliance on laboratory work leaves some open questions. The main question is whether animals employ cognition in daily decision-making. The following discussion uses sperm competition (SC) as a test case for demonstrating the effect of cognition on routine choices, in this case, sexual selection. Cognition is...

We explore the outstanding question whether Conciliationism commits one to Uniqueness, and return a negative verdict. After setting out some preliminary matters (§1), we explain and criticize Kelly’s [2010] argument that Conciliationism commits one to Uniqueness (§2), thereby defeating his larger argument that Conciliationism deserves no dialectical special treatment. But this brings no comfort...

A directed BIB design DB(k, A; v) is a BIB design B(k, 2A; v) in which the blocks are transitively ordered k-tuples and each ordered pair of elements occurs in exactly A blocks. A nested directed BIB design NDB(k, A; v) of form IT2<n<k-l(njn, An)in is a DB(k, A; v) where each block contains E2<n<k-l injn mutually disjoint subblocks, injn subblocks of which are partitIoned into in mutually disjo...

A small marsupial has thrown new light on the question of why females typically mate with several males: promiscuous female antechinuses have many more surviving offspring because males that are successful in sperm competition also sire healthy offspring.

CIHNA Let v E V( G). VI/e define tha.t if for each vertex v E 8)1 ISI+2n. then G JUJIU"-',-"Ln conditions for n-extendable in paper a order v such that n S (II and any n lnCLeu,enaelU and let n be a n-extendable G 01 G are contained in a of vertices of G \Ve define the InCI€'lJ'enaellt set in U k }. of odd components of G. All and notation not defined in this paper are from Since Plummer introd...

This article assesses the extent to which managed competition could be successful in rural areas. Using 1990 Medicare hospital patient origin data, over 8 million rural residents were found to live in areas potentially without provider choice. Almost all of these areas were served by providers who compete for other segments of their market. Restricting use of out-of-State providers would severe...

The CADE ATP System Competition (CASC) is an annual evaluation of fully automatic, first order Automated Theorem Proving systems – the world championship for such systems. This paper captures the state of CASC after CASC-20, the tenth CASC, held in 2005. It provides a summarized history of CASC, details of the current design of the competition, observations and discussion of the effects of CASC...